Month: August 2009

It’s amazing to us that a little less than 13 years ago, we sent a reporter to investigate a pending facelift in Belmont and he came back writing about the neighborhood’s “P.R. problem.” Sheesh, where did that go? These days, the place has an image too hip for its own good. At least that’s what it seems like when residents start yelling about yet another damn restaurant near the intersection of Monticello Road and Hinton Avenue, the same juncture where our reporter formerly discovered that “signs of life are few.” $55,200 houses? A dearth of white-collar residents? Not anymore, honey.

Nine years after that Belmont story, in December 2005, we brought you a different kind of development news: 18,725 new houses in the pipeline for Charlottesville and Albemarle. When it comes to growth, it’s just as we noted then: “The word alone is enough to start an argument. We need more! We need less! Hardly anyone seems to think things are just right as they are.”

Then again, as the intervening years have made clear, the real estate market always has the last laugh.

Paging through the archives

“It’s mid-morning in Charlottesville’s Belmont neighborhood, and signs of life are few at the intersection of Monticello Road and Hinton Avenue, an area nicknamed ‘Downtown Belmont.’ The buzz of an air drill can be heard in a nearby garage, while a few cars move down the narrow road lined with somewhat rickety mini-marts and frame houses…

“Still, Belmont’s disrepair has a gritty charm—a charm that many residents want to preserve, albeit with less grit. This year, City officials are spending more than $300,000 for a Belmont facelift…

“‘I’m excited about these improvements,” says architect Joe Celentano, a Belmont resident for 10 years and owner of a stucco and wood frame house on Belmont Avenue for the last two. ‘Belmont has a lot to offer in the sense of a neighborhood.’

“Celentano, a member of a City task force to improve Belmont, is just the type of person City officials want more of in the stucco-fied neighborhood.

“They want white-collar folks with families who see opportunity in rickety old houses; folks who enjoy a front-porch culture, where neighbors visit each other; and folks who don’t mind when the smell from Moore’s Creek Sewage Treatment plant wafts up every so often from the valley…

“Better yet, cool housing is affordable in Belmont for low- to mid-income folk: the median value of a house —mostly proud but repair-hungry frame houses dating from the 1890s and onward—is $55,200, compared to an average of $84,000 for the entire City, according to a local study.”—Jonathan Fox, October 29, 1996

Getting covered

“Recently Charlottesville has seen 477 new residential units go up, with places like Coran Capshaw’s Walker Square Apartments on W. Main Street, or Frank Stoner’s Belmont Lofts setting the tone for the thousands of new units that are on the way. Much of the city’s new commercial space will be combined with residential space, a trend known as ‘mixed-use’ development. Part of the City’s plan is for suburban refugees and Wahoos to be able to walk instead of driving their cars.

“In Albemarle, C-VILLE’s development forecast points to the designated growth areas: Pantops, Crozet and Route 29N will continue exploding with new apartment buildings, subdivisions and big-box shopping centers…

“The brew is percolating, so to speak, with recent news of one of the area’s biggest land deals ever. Last month the Breeden family sold its 1,353-acre farm, known as Forest Lodge [or Biscuit Run], for more than $46 million. Developer Hunter Craig, rumored to be backed by the giant Toll Brothers homebuilding company, purchased the parcel and could put nearly 5,000 homes just south of Charlottesville.”—John Borgmeyer and Nell Boeschenstein, December 6, 2005

“Give it a shot,” said Michael Koenig, Darden’s director of MBA programs, to a packed room of new MBA students. They are the first students to receive the new Kindle DX as part of a pilot program Amazon is sponsoring.

Back in May, Amazon announced its plans to begin a pilot program in five colleges and universities and Darden was the first and sole business school chosen. One more business school was added later.

The Kindle DX, a slim, wireless reading device, has a 10’’ screen and can be flipped sideways and upside down, much like the iPhone, for better handling. It also has search and highlighting features.

For Melvyn Han, having the chance to try the Kindle DX was “fantastic.” “I am incredibly excited to try it and see where it goes,” he says. Han said that because the new generations are “always wired,” learning to study on the Kindle DX may not be a stretch. “I use my iPhone everywhere I go,” he says. “It’s great to be able to learn new skills.”

For others, the new way of learning may take some getting used to.

There is, however, another dimension to Han’s excitement.

“I am environmentally conscious, and with the Kindle we don’t have to use all that paper,” he says. Koenig, who has been at the forefront of the partnership with Amazon since the beginning, says that sustainability is a major factor that played into the decision to be part of the program. Unlike the other schools who may be using only a couple of textbooks the entire semester, says Koenig, “our students will have 80 or 90 separate documents, most of which are business cases, and that’s not even all the readings they have for the first semester.” In all, Koenig says, the students will have to read more than 300 cases. And that’s a big saving in paper costs.

The pilot program will end in May of next year and after that, students have a choice. “We didn’t feel it was appropriate at the end of the one-year assessment to give it to them in lieu of their other colleagues,” says Koenig. The students will be able to purchase the Kindle DX they have worked with for $200.

C-VILLE welcomes news tips from readers. Send them to news@c-ville.com.

Accessing the attic of the Massie-Wills residence means literally climbing the stairs, using both hands to scale the approximately seventy-degree incline. Reaching the top provides a fresh perspective on the historic designation of the house at 215 4th Street NE. The space contains a small library arrayed in bookshelves and boxes along the far wall, as well as loudspeakers, paints and a piece of unfinished artwork propped against the exposed brick. Strands of digital cables hang from a crossbeam, left by an Internet startup that rented the space in the 1990s.

Nothing in the attic is nearly as old as the domicile itself, but no other room in the house feels quite as lived-in. Built in 1830 by Harden Massie and then renovated by F. M. Wills around 1870 to add an apartment on the ground floor, the house has changed hands several times. Since owner Pooh Johnson purchased the Massie-Wills house in 1989, the place has headquartered a gift shop, a publisher, an art consortium and a real estate company, meanwhile accommodating tenants from married couples to the college-aged.

Recently, however, Johnson put the property up for sale.

“Taking on tenants worked up to a point,” she says. “And we’ve been very fortunate in a way, because people have always been wanting to rent it.”

But lately, she says, a declining market has left the house unoccupied, and continuing to rent the house is no longer worth the trouble.

“I don’t want to rent it like a boarding house again,” says Johnson. “It’s hard when you let it out to kids who don’t care about it, who don’t realize what it is. Three months later, there are four broken windowpanes.”

Johnson has devoted years to restoring the house to its original condition, stripping layers off the kitchen floors and stairs to reveal hardwood pine, reinstalling antique doors and light fixtures. Fixing a shattered window isn’t as simple as finding a capable smithy; for Johnson, it requires tracking down the right type and dimension of 19th-century glass.

215 4th Street NE is listed as a contributing structure in the National and State Register district, an honorary designation given to properties that help preserve the historic integrity of the area. Charlottesville’s Zoning Ordinance lists a variety of factors that determine whether a local property may be deemed “historic,” including the structure’s age and condition, character of design, overall aesthetic quality, and state of preservation. Sites associated with a historic person or event or with a renowned architect or master craftsman also qualify. If one or more of these qualities were altered drastically, says Johnson, the residence would lose its contributor status.

The Massie-Wills house also falls within the North Downtown Architectural Design Control district, which means that any exterior change to the property is subject to evaluation by the Charlottesville Board of Architectural Review. The Board’s guidelines generally require that commercial “rehabilitation” restore and maintain as many historic elements of the structure as possible, and that any contemporary modifications must be aesthetically compatible with the original design. Regulations prohibit the application of “false historical appearances, such as ‘Colonial,’ ‘Olde English,’ or other theme designs,” as well as additions that would “duplicate the form, material, and detailing of the structure to the extent that they compromise the historic character of the structure.”

In many cases, such as with the recently Urban-Outfitted ex-Hardware Store, these regulations deal with matters of taste, and become points of contention for locals who resent the corporate appropriation of their culture.

The house on 215 4th Street NE is one of a local few remaining so close to its original condition. “There aren’t a lot of them around,” says Johnson, which is why she has resisted bids from bargain-hunters and wealthy tourists who hope the sluggish economy might cut them a deal. Johnson is looking to sell for a little over $1 million, and says that if the house doesn’t fetch a suitable price, she’ll take it off the market and renovate it. “It’s such a jewel, because it’s so unusual. Plaster walls. Beaded paneling. Everything is pretty much original,” she says. “This is the way it looked.”

C-VILLE welcomes news tips from readers. Send them to news@c-ville.com.